"The Republic has grown and expanded for many generations, encountering no worse than a few interplanetary squabbles and civil wars…but if we should confront the fabled Sith Empire, we will experience a war so great, so devastating…it can cross the fabric of hyperspace, a conflagration spanning the galaxy…"

The conflict encompassed the entire Galactic Republic, though the main forces focused their attention on three Republic worlds, and later took the war to the remote star system Primus Goluud, and the Sith mausoleum world of Korriban.[2]

After it overcame the initial shock of the Sith invasion, the Republic's armadas regrouped and annihilated the Sith Empire, forcing the Sith LordNaga Sadow to exile himself to Yavin 4.[2]

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After their defeat during the earliest Jedi Civil Wars, called the Great Schisms, the adherents of the dark side fled from Republic space and settled on the world of Korriban, where they ruled over the barbaric, red-skinned Sith species like gods.

In time, the Dark Jedi and the remarkably Force-sensitive Sith natives interbred through the use of Sith alchemy, and became one people. The united Sith formed an immensely rich and powerful empire built upon sorcery, and dark-side-fueled technology quite possibly adapted from the scattered ruins of the earlier Infinite Empire of the Rakata.

Over the centuries, the Dark Jedi exiles were forgotten by the Galactic Republic, as were all records of the Republic also lost by the Sith. The two civilizations thrived in isolation, each ignorant of the other.

During the height of the Sith Empire, two Republic hyperspace explorers stumbled upon the Sith mausoleum planet of Korriban by chance. The siblings, Gav and Jori Daragon, hoped to discover a lucrative new hyperspace route that would help them pay off their enormous debts. After stealing back their impounded ship Starbreaker 12, they dialed random coordinates into their nav computer and entered hyperspace, trusting in their "luck" (i.e., untrained Force potential) to survive the journey.[2]

Upon landing, Gav and Jori were immediately captured, and brought to the icy Sith capital world of Ziost for interrogation. After learning of the forgotten Republic, a conclave of the Sith Lords led by Kressh declared them spies and sentenced them to death, but Naga Sadow disagreed. He dreamed of vast new territories to conquer for the Empire. With the aid of his alchemically-modified Massassi Warriors, he masterminded the Daragons' escape, and planted evidence that they had been rescued by Republic agents.[2]

Sadow moved the Daragons to his personal fortress on Khar Shian, pretending he was their ally, while simultaneously using their supposed "escape" to galvanize the Sith Lords into a war against the Republic. Keeping the siblings separated, he began to teach Gav Sith sorcery, even as he made excuses to keep his sister Jori from returning to Republic space.[2]

Kressh soon discovered Sadow's subterfuge, and marshaled his followers to attack Sadow's fortress. When Kressh's fleet arrived, Sadow advised Jori to flee from the battle without her absent brother, and to warn the Republic of the impending invasion, but all had transpired as Sadow had planned. Once Jori made the jump to lightspeed, he unleashed a massive force that he had previously withheld and soundly defeated Kressh, whose flagship was destroyed in the engagement. With his competition presumably dead, Sadow united the military forces of the Empire, and crowned himself Dark Lord of the Sith. Following the homing beacon he had placed aboard the Starbreaker 12, Sadow began his invasion of the Galactic Republic.[2]

Meanwhile, after numerous delays, Jori managed to deliver a warning to Empress Teta of the Koros system. The skeptical empress eventually followed the advice of her Jedi councilor Memit Nadill, and that of his companions Odan-Urr and Master Ooroo. She alerted Coruscant to the impending invasion, but few heeded her warnings.[2]

Sadow made his base at the Primus Goluud at the Coreward end of the Daragon Trail and deployed his fleets to invade numerous Republic worlds simultaneously. Sadow knew he could not defeat the much-larger Republic Navy, and so relied on surprise and rapid early victories to carry the day. He positioned his eye-shaped meditation sphere near the red-giant star Primus Goluud and used battle meditation to aid his forces in the field. The ferocity of the Sith invasion would swiftly overwhelm the lax Republic Navy.[2]

During the fighting at Koros Major, Gav searched for his sister at Aarrba the Hutt's starship repair dock, flanked by a host of Massassi bodyguards. Aarrba, a close family friend, was struck down by his guards just moments before Jori entered the chamber. Thinking Gav had killed Aarrba, she attacked her brother with a lightsaber given to her by Odan-Urr. Gav fled from his sister, and returned to his master at Primus Goluud. Without their commander, the Sith forces on Koros fell into disarray, and were defeated.[2] Upon arrival at Primus Goluud, Gav opened fire on Sadow's meditation sphere, breaking the Sith Lord's concentration upon the distant invasion of Coruscant, thereby allowing the Republic soldiers to rally and turn the tide of the battle.

The tide of the war changed for good with the discovery that Sadow used Force illusions to make his forces appear more numerous than they really were. Buoyed by this knowledge, the Republic Navy rallied at Anaxes and counterattacked at Kirrek and Thokos. At the Battle of Kirrek, Jedi Master Ooroo defeated a massed force of Massassi warriors, but sacrificed his life in the process and died in the arms of his PadawanOdan-Urr.[2] The Republic Navy then moved to support Coruscant's defenses and pushed the Sith forces back to Koros Major.[3]

Facing defeat, Sadow pulled his forces back to to Primus Goluud, but was followed by Jori, Empress Teta and a large Koros fleet. Realizing that the tide of war had turned against him, Sadow abandoned his embattled forces to the leadership of Gav Daragon, and used a Sith superweapon aboard his flagship Corsair to implode the nearby star. Disgusted by Sadow's betrayal, Gav turned against his master. He transmitted the hyperspace coordinates of the Sith Empire to Empress Teta, and warned her to leave the system just before Primus Goluud went supernova, destroying Naga Sadow's meditation sphere, and Gav along with it.[2]

Naga Sadow managed to flee back to the Sith Empire, but a living, breathing Ludo Kressh was waiting for him in ambush. Having discovered Sadow's plan to assassinate him, Kressh had allowed the new Sith Lord to think him dead. His attack on Sadow's fortress had been a feint intended to lull Sadow into complacency, but in the end Kressh's complex plans came to naught. He was killed when one of Sadow's vessels slammed into his own during the frenzied Sith battle over Korriban.[2]

The Republic armadas arrived while the Sith fleets battled each other, and managed to annihilate them both in the cross-fire. Sadow sacrificed the remains of his fleet to ensure his own survival. Destroying his pursuers with tricks and sorcery, he limped away from the engagement aboard his damaged flagship.[2] With Sadow fled, Shar Dakhan became acting Dark Lord.

In the aftermath of the battle, Supreme ChancellorPultimo of the Republic ordered a general invasion of Sith space.[3] The Republic and the Jedi Order then embarked on a military expedition throughout the territories ruled by the Sith Empire, to search out all remaining Sith strongholds and destroy them.[4] The attack was temporarily averted when Shar Dakhan ordered suicide attacks, forcing the Republic forces to retreat but many Sith killed themselves ritually, giving an advantage to the Republic fleet to win the War.[3]

At the end of the Great Hyperspace War, inspired by the example of his deceased Master Ooroo, the Jedi Odan-Urr founded the great museum city upon the planet Ossus. Stored within its countless libraries and vaults were ancient Jedi artifacts gathered by his fallen Master, as well as Sith artifacts collected from the wreckage of their invasion fleet. The Sith artifacts included a Sith holocron that Odan-Urr had found on a derelict Sith vessel near Koros Major. Over the centuries, Ossus grew to become the premier Jedi library, archive, and academy of the Galactic Republic.

Due to her bravery and tactical brilliance during the war, the people of Koros honored their leader Empress Teta by renaming their star system after her.

Some of the Sith were exiled to Ambria, Thule, Tund and Vjun; others were shipwrecked to worlds like Kesh without hope to escape. Although the war decimated the Sith species, these exiles ensured the survival of the Sith traditions on these planets.[3] Naga Sadow and his remaining Massassi Warriors fled to the remote Yavin system, and hid on its fourth moon. There, he used Sith sorcery to place his body in stasis while his warped Massassi servants slowly degenerated into barbarism.

One Sith survivor, Lord Vitiate, returned to his home planet of Nathema and called eight thousand Sith Lords to meet him there. Taking control of their minds, Vitiate conducted a great ritual that consumed them, the planet's population, and the very Force itself, leaving Nathema as little more than a void. Thus empowered, Vitiate abandoned his mortal name and became known only as the Sith Emperor. Blaming the devastation on the Jedi, the Emperor led the remnants of the Empire in a twenty-year journey into the Unknown Regions, until they came across the forgotten Sith colony of Dromund Kaas. There, he performed dark rituals, altering the planet's ionosphere into an electrical storm. He rebuilt the Sith forces and bided his time, until the Republic was weakened and ready for invasion once more. This culminated in the Great Galactic War between 3681 BBY and 3653 BBY.[6]